Re: Extension Specification for XHTML5 entity definitions.

On 18/01/2013 19:40, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> My understanding was that the HTML5 spec rules just matched what
> essentially all browsers already did for XHTML/XML parsing. If
> that's not the case, it would be useful new information to know the
> details.


It isn't clear to me what the next course of action should be, this is a
simple (but serious) spec bug that could have a one line fix inserted,
preferably into HTML 5.0, or, if it of it misses the boat on that, in
5.1. But the longer a bug goes unfixed the longer the compatibility
problem with implementations that implement the broken specification.

I made a separate extension specification as that appeared to be
required by the decision process for a bug being handled by a tracker
issue, but the intention there is really just to make explicit what the
change to the main HTML spec should be and to provide some rationale.

So, we'd rather not go through the motions of formally proposing

http://www.w3.org/2003/entities/2007doc/xhtmlpubid.html

as a REC-track spec in /TR, however if that is required by the process
we are prepared to do that.

It would be simpler for everyone (and better for document production on
the web) if the HTML spec was simply updated. As this would arguably be
a new feature (although I'd rather just call it a fix to a broken
existing feature) you may want to flag it as "at risk" if it goes in to
5.0 after CR Just to highlight that a minor implementation change is
required.

There has been no argument proposed that the change is not an
improvement, the only reasons offered for not changing are compatibility
issues, but as demonstrated in my last reply, the existing spec is not
compatible with existing content and inconsistently implemented in
current browsers so the compatibility argument is weak at best.


David

Received on Tuesday, 22 January 2013 10:45:10 UTC